Honour & Arms Club

A lot of times Buhurt is critiqued as being Ahistorical, non-authentic and not "true medieval fighting" and all of that is true to some extent.

What gets lost in the rhetoric is that Buhurt isn't designed to replicate what would have been seen on the battlefield or in a judicial duel. It is not a fight to the death.

Buhurt is a modern take on medieval tournament fighting, which draws inspiration from a multitude of medieval literary accounts of tournaments and friendly combats throughout the medieval period.

If we look at medieval source material, we can find written accounts of tournament specific rules such as no thrusting, conditions of victory such as making your opponent touch the ground with their right hand or number of counted blows, as well as codified equipment specifications such as rebated swords/axes.

Add to that extant pieces of armour and weaponry built specifically for tournament/foot combat use and we see that it was as much a sport in medieval times as is it now, with rules, regulations and to a large degree, overbuilt equipment to keep combatants safe.

If we delve further into the medieval treatises of the time, fighting in and out of armour is well documented.

There is a lot of commonality today between techniques used within the Buhurt list and those depicted in the manuscripts of fencing and wrestling masters of the medieval period.

This image is from a mid-16th century manuscript compiled by Paulus Hector Mair depicting a position within an armoured grappling exchange.

Most of us in the modern Buhurt world would see this as either an O Soto Gari attempt or by the ubiquitous "Hump and Bump" moniker if used against the list.

Whilst we see Buhurt as a modern take on medieval combat sport, it's good to remember that with a little research, we can draw parallels in the techniques we use competitively today with techniques directly taught by medieval fencing and grappling masters of the past.

TLDR; Buhurt is a modern sporting take drawing from medieval influence > Some of the techniques we use are historical in basis and can be found in medieval treatises.

Another warm mixed session tonight with both soft kit duelling and armoured duelling going on in the club.

A very warm session tonight which started with a quick warm up and mobilisation before we looked at the finer points and principles of Kuzushi.

We then transferred to looking at covering 4 quadrants with throwing/off-balancing attacks before stepping up to active resistance rounds to put things in to practice.

The houndskull of truth and wisdom dropping thoughts every Tuesday.

No rest for the wicked. Gary , Luke and George back in armour after fighting last night and the rest of the guys getting reps in.

We have 3 fighters on the Daniel‘s & Jenny‘s fight night tonight representing Northern Wolves as well as Danny and Mary helping with the officiating and judging.

Be sure to tune in to the PPV stream from 6pm to see Gary, Luke and George fighting 1v1 and in the 5v5.

We said it and we stand by it.

Back to basics and then adding a little spice to basic positions tonight. We be cooking!